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Dell to go SLEDding in China

Dell has announced plans to sell Optiplex computers in China with Novell's …

Dell is the latest hardware maker to take a ride on Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED). Dell will be selling several Optiplex models in China with SLED preinstalled. The systems will come with a year of hardware support from Dell and 60 days of software support from Novell.

SLED, which is largely based on technologies that Novell obtained by acquiring Ximian, is becoming a popular choice for hardware makers. Lenovo, for instance, is already selling SLED in the enterprise market.

Last year, Dell revealed that computers running the Linux operating system make up approximately 25 percent of the company's enterprise market sales. Dell is largely committed to Red Hat for enterprise Linux computing, but also sells SUSE on a number of systems. Dell also backed the controversial deal between Microsoft and Novell by purchasing for resale SUSE Linux Enterprise Server license certificates from Microsoft.